Treating depression and anxiety is my mission. They reverberate through families and across generations and great suffering occurs.
The good news is that we now have effective medication and psychotherapy treatments. That’s why we need to identify depression and anxiety and talk about them openly. It’s the first step along the pathway of healing and recovery.
These three background stories will help you understand my approach to treating anxiety and drpression:
I am double board certified in Adult Psychiatry and Consultation-liaison Psychiatry (psychiatry in the medically ill).
I completed two post graduate fellowships. The first was in Consultation-liaison Psychiatry at Long Island Jewish Medical Center (2001), where I was privileged to be mentored by Dr. Steven Saravay and Dr. Maurice Steinberg, amongst the founders of consultation-liaison psychiatry in the USA.
My second fellowship was in Public Psychiatry at Columbia University (2002). This program nurtures program leaders in psychiatry who will focus on delivery of psychiatric services across populations. My focus was on psycho-oncology which is important because cancer touches so many of us and our families. Here, my mentors were Dr Julian Ranz who founded the field of Public Psychiatry and the late Dr Sara L. Kellerman, who was the Commissioner for Mental Health in New York City. As a young psychiatrist, it was very inspiring for me to be influenced by such great paradigm shifters.
I am lucky to have had an international training, attending medical school at Monash University, Australia (1991). I did training in Internal Medicine at Hadassah Medical Center, Israel (1993-6) and psychiatric residency training at Eitanim Mental Health Center (1994-99)
I was fortunate to complete the Extramural Program for Residency Directors at the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research (2002). Being taught by Aaron T. Beck M.D., the founder of Cognitive Therapy, and his equally inspiring daughter, Dr. Judith Beck, were formative to my approach to psychotherapy for depression and anxiety, given my prior training in psychodynamic therapy.
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (2005-2015). Here I developed psychological services for leukemia, lymphoma, stem-cell transplant and ICU patients. I was mentored by Dr. Jimmie Holland who founded the field of psycho-oncology. Another mentor and colleague was Prof. David Kissane, an important psycho-oncology leader who took over the reins from Jimmie Holland. He taught me that sickness reverberates throughout the family, that better doctor-patient communication can impact outcomes and that death can be used to heal rifts in families and ease grief.
Weill Cornell Medicine/New York Presbyterian Hospital (2015-2017). I was an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine/NYP where I established and led the Weill Cornell Psychiatry Collaborative Care Center, with its team of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurse practitioners and care managers.
My research focus was in three main areas: Collaborative and integrative care psychiatry, Doctor-patient communication, Acute Cancer Cognitive Therapy (which I developed).
Below are links to the eleven textbook chapters and over 50 research articles that I have authored.
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